Various types of floor cleaning, scrubbing, and polishing implements are presently available commercially for use for residential and industrial purposes. Such implements are used for cleaning and scrubbing various types of hard surface floors such as cement, quarry tile, ceramic tile, terrazzo, and wood in addition to vinyl. Some locations in which cleaning, scrubbing, and polishing implements are designed to be used are provided with carpeting when intended to be used in such environments, the implements must be configurable to address the unique problems presented by commercial, shag, and plush carpeting.
Additionally, some areas in which implements of this type are used present unique problems because of limited space resricting maneuverability. For example, often cleaning must be accomplished under desks, in elevators, or in closets.
Numerous attempts have been made to provide an implement which addresses and solves all these cleaning problems. For example, the R. E. Whittaker Co. distributes an implement known as THE ROTO WASH.RTM.. That machine seeks to replace mops, wringers, pile lifters, buckets, floor machines, and carpet shampoo and extraction equipments. Not only does it seek to provide a machine that is able to handle any type of floor surface, but it also provides a configuration which makes it maneuverable and, therefore, able to be used in limited sized spaces.
THE ROTO WASH.RTM., as an example of various floor working machines, provides a forked handle to facilitate movement of the device over the floor being worked. When the handle is made to extend generally vertically, transport wheels are lowered from the chassis of the device so that the implement can be moved from one location to another. When the operator wishes to utilize the implement for its intended purpose, he need only pivot the handle rearwardly in order to retract the transport wheels. Motive force of the chassis is, with the wheels in this retracted position, provided by the operator and a pair of rotating brushes.
Because of the retractability of the wheels, they are, necessarily, quite small. As a result, the mobility of the implement, even when the wheels are in the transport position, is relatively restricted. This would, of course, be true also of other equipments of the type of THE ROTO WASH.RTM.. Implements of this type are not, therefore, able to be transported quickly and easily from one location to another without their being picked up and placed on the bed of a transporting vehicle.
It is to these desirable features dictated by the prior art and the deficiencies presently existent that the present invention is directed. It is an improved carriage capable of quickly and easily mounting an implement used for working floors and for transporting that implement to another location without the restriction imposed by transport wheels which are an integral part of the implement.